zika virus, still a social problem

Dr Vanessa van der Linden, a Recife neuro-paediatrician, was the first doctor to spot the outbreak of micro cephaly in 2015. Having seen the calcifications it caused in brain scans, she anticipated children would be born with problems like visual impairment and epilepsy – which she found in 60-70% of patients in the first year. The seizures cause children like Graziella to forget things like swallowing. Hydrocephalus – the build-up of liquid on the brain – was a surprise.

Most children diagnosed at the peak of the crisis are now two; many have never spoken a word nor taken a step. More than half have no interaction between their eyes and their brain, Van der Linden says.

As rightly predicted by Dr Vanessa van der Linden, most children with microcephaly ain't living but existing, deprived of the joy of living. one of such example is Alice Bezerra, who was born in October 2015 with microcephaly,she had a feeding tube inserted into her stomach after struggling to gain weight. Her parents, Nadja, 43, and João, 56, spend hours each day watching a thickened milk formula flow into her stomach. “Now she is getting fat,” says her mother, “[but] she has no teeth.”

This and much more has been the fate of parents whose children are micro cephalos.